Perch Energy, Inc. and its subsidiaries that offer products and services for its community solar business ("Perch Community Solar") respect the privacy of our users. This Website Privacy Policy ("Policy") describes our privacy practices concerning information collected in connection with the Perch Community Solar website, which is located at https://www.perchenergy.com, and related sites (the "Site").
This Policy is intended to explain the conditions under which Perch Community Solar collects, uses, and discloses personal and other information in connection with the Site, and your rights in relation to that information. By visiting our Site and/or using the features made available to you on the Site, you are agreeing to the terms of this Policy.
The personal and other information that we collect about you is controlled by Perch Community Solar, which is headquartered in the United States at: 800 Boylston Street, Suite 2902, Boston, Massachusetts 02199
Perch Community Solar collects both "personal information" and "non-personal information" about Site users. For purposes of this Policy, "non-personal information" is information that Perch Community Solar cannot directly associate with a specific person without the aid of additional information. By contrast, "personal information," is information such as a name or email address that Perch Community Solar can directly associate with a specific person or entity without additional information. When we combine non-personal information with personal information, we treat all of the combined information as personal information.
Personal Information: You can visit the Site without submitting any personal information. However, if you use certain features on the Site, or you sign up to use our services, you will be required to provide personal information. Such information could include, for example, your name, email address, telephone number, postal address, social security number, date of birth, the name of your electric utility company, your electric utility account number, and/or a copy of your electric utility bill. Our online contact form also contains a "message" field through which you may submit additional personal information.
We may combine personal information collected through the Site with other information that we or third parties collect about you in other contexts—such as our communications with you via email or phone, or your customer service records. We will treat such combined information as personal information and protect it in accordance with this Policy.
Web Log Data: When you use the Site, we automatically receive and record certain information from your computer (or other device) and your browser. This may include such data as your IP address and domain name, the pages you visit on the Site, the date and time of your visit, the files that you download, the URLs from the websites you visit before and after navigating to the Site, your software and hardware attributes (including device IDs), your general geographic location (e.g., your city, state, or metropolitan region), and certain cookie information (see below). To obtain such information, we may use web logs or applications that recognize your computer and gather information about its online activity.
Cookies: We also use cookies on the Site. Cookies are small files that are stored on your computer by your web browser. A cookie allows the Site to recognize whether you have visited before and may store user preferences and other information. For example, cookies can be used to collect information about your use of the Site during your current session and over time (including the pages you view and the files you download), your computer's operating system and browser type, your Internet service provider, your domain name and IP address, your general geographic location, the website that you visited before the Site, and the link you used to leave the Site. If you are concerned about having cookies on your computer, you can set your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being set, allowing you to decide whether to accept it. You can also delete cookies from your computer. However, if you choose to block or delete cookies, certain features of the Site may not operate correctly.
Web Beacons: The Site or the emails that you receive from Perch Community Solar may use an application known as a "web beacon" (also known as a "clear gif" or "web bug"). A web beacon is an electronic file that usually consists of a single-pixel image. It can be embedded in a web page or in an email to transmit information, which could include personal information. For example, it allows an email sender to determine whether a user has opened a particular email.
Third-Party Online Tracking and Behavioral Advertising:We also may partner with certain third parties to collect, analyze, and use some of the personal and non-personal information described in this section. For example, we may allow third parties to set cookies or use web beacons on the Site or in email communications from Perch Community Solar. This information may be used for a variety of purposes, including online behavioral advertising, as discussed below (see the section entitled "How we share personal and non-personal information with third parties").When you visit our Site, log in, register or open an email, cookies, ad beacons, and similar technologies may be used by our online data partners or vendors to associate these activities with information they or others have about you, including your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and more. We (or service providers on our behalf) may then send communications and marketing to these addresses. You may opt out of receiving this advertising, as well as request your data not be used for these purposes by following the steps to contact us below.
Do Not Track Signals: Perch Community Solar does not respond to web browser "do not track" signals.
Perch Community Solar uses the information that we collect for a variety of purposes. If we have personal information about you, we may use it, for example: to respond to your questions or requests concerning the Site or other services offered by Perch Community Solar or our partners; to fulfill the terms of any agreement you have with us; to fulfill your requests for our services or otherwise complete a transaction that you initiate; to send you information about our services, including newsletters, updates, or other communications; to deliver confirmations, account information, notifications, and similar operational communications; to improve your user experience and the quality of our products and services; to comply with legal and/or regulatory requirements; and to manage our business. We also use personal information to perform a credit inquiry during initial customer onboarding, and to obtain historical energy consumption information from your utility provider in order to appropriately tailor our services to your needs.
We use the non-personal information that we collect for such purposes as: counting and recognizing visitors to the Site; analyzing how visitors use the Site and various Site features; improving the Site and enhancing users' experiences with the Site; creating new products and services or improving our existing products and services; enabling additional website analytics and research concerning the Site, including with respect to how to optimize our marketing practices; and managing our business. Perch Community Solar may link non-personal information gathered using cookies and web beacons with personal information. But in that event, we will treat the combined information as personal information.
We also may use the personal and non-personal information that we collect to send you promotional communications, including emails, telephone calls and text messages, and/or postal mail about the products and services offered by Perch Community Solar or our partners. Although we hope you will find our promotional communications of interest, you may opt out of receiving them by sending an email to customercare@perchenergy.com with "optout" in the subject line. Promotional emails will also have instructions for opting out of that type of communication.
We share your personal information and non-personal information with other parties for a variety of purposes, as described below.
Analytics and Online Behavioral Advertising: We partner with certain third-party service providers to collect the non-personal information discussed above and to engage in analysis, auditing, research, and reporting. These third parties may use web logs or web beacons, and they may set and access cookies on your computer or other device. In particular, the Site uses Google Analytics to help collect and analyze certain information for the purposes discussed above.
The Site also enables tracking mechanisms to collect your non-personal information for use in online behavioral advertising. For example, we or third parties may use the fact that you visited the Site to target online ads for Perch Community Solar services to you on non-Perch Community Solar websites. In addition, our third-party advertising networks might use information about your use of the Site to help target non-Perch Community Solar advertisements based on your online behavior in general. For information about behavioral advertising practices, including privacy and confidentiality, visit the Network Advertising Initiative website or the Digital Advertising Alliance website.
The use of online tracking mechanisms by third parties is subject to those third parties' own privacy policies, and not this Policy. If you prefer to prevent third parties from setting and accessing cookies on your computer, you may set your browser to block cookies. Additionally, you may remove yourself from the targeted advertising of companies within the Network Advertising Initiative by opting out here, or of companies participating in the Digital Advertising Alliance program by opting out here. Although our website currently does not respond to "do not track" browser headers, you can limit tracking through these third-party programs and by taking the other steps discussed above.
Third-Party Service Providers and Business Partners:Perch Community Solar also uses other third-party service providers to help us manage and improve the Site and other Perch Community Solar services. These service providers may collect and/or use your personal or non-personal information to assist us in achieving the purposes discussed above in the section entitled "How we use the personal and non-personal information that we collect." For example, we use third parties to host our website, our customer relationship database, and our company documents, and to help us target and implement our email communications and direct mailings. We also use third-party platforms to help us manage our relationships with the people and companies that use our services. And we use third parties to help us service your account and process payments.
We also may share your personal or non-personal information with other third parties when necessary to fulfill your requests for services; to complete a transaction that you initiate; to meet the terms of any agreement that you have with us or our partners; or to manage our business. For example, we may share your personal information with consumer reporting agencies to perform a credit check when you sign up for our services. Or we may share certain personal information with your electric utility provider to obtain historical energy consumption information that we use to appropriately tailor our services to your energy needs.
Your Direct Sharing of Personal Information Through Third-Party Websites and Services: The Site may enable you to share directly personal information with websites or online services operated by third parties. For example, the Site contains links to third-party websites that incorporate comment and social media features. If you choose to use these features, you may disclose your personal information not just to those third-party websites and services, but also to their users and the public more generally. Because these third-party websites and services are not operated by Perch Community Solar, Perch Community Solar is not responsible for the content or practices of those websites or services. The collection, use, and disclosure of your personal and non-personal information will be subject to the privacy policies of the third-party websites or services, and not this Policy.
Legal Purposes: We also may use or share your personal or non-personal information with third parties when we believe, in our sole discretion, that doing so is necessary:
Aggregated Information: From time to time, Perch Community Solar may also share anonymized and aggregated information about Site users, such as by publishing a report on trends in the usage of the Site or by providing such information to a third-party service provider to help us develop marketing or other analytics.
Security
Perch Community Solar uses commercially reasonable physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or unauthorized access, use, modification, or deletion. However, no security program is foolproof, and thus we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal or other information.
If you want to learn more about the personal information that Perch Community Solar has about you, or you would like to update, change, or delete that information, please contact us by email at customercare@perchenergy.com.
The personal and non-personal information that we collect through or in connection with the Site is transferred to and processed in the United States for the purposes described above. Perch Community Solar also may subcontract the processing of your data to, or otherwise share your data with, affiliates or third parties in the United States or countries other than your country of residence. The data-protection laws in these countries may be different from, and less stringent than, those in your country of residence. By using the Site or by providing any personal or non-personal information to us, you expressly consent to such transfer and processing.
The Site is not directed to children under the age of 13, and Perch Community Solar will never knowingly collect personal or other information from anyone it knows is under the age of 13. We recommend that persons over 13 but under 18 years of age ask their parents for permission before using the Site or sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.
If we are made aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 years old in a manner that is inconsistent with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, then we will delete this information as soon as practicable. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of thirteen has provided Personal Data to us through this Site, please contact us at customercare@perchenergy.com.
Technology and the Internet are rapidly changing. Perch Community Solar therefore is likely to make changes to the Site in the future and as a consequence will need to revise this Policy to reflect those changes. Perch Community Solar will post all such changes on the Site, so you should review this page periodically. By using the Site after we have posted revisions to this Policy, you agree that we may use and disclose your personal information as described in the revised Policy, whether we collected such personal information before or after we posted the updated Policy
If you have any questions or comments regarding our Policy, please mail or email us at:
Effective date: April 5, 2024.